Deep Shift Technology Tipping Points and Societal Impact
WEF_GAC15_Technological_Tipping_Points_report_2015
WEF_GAC15_Technological_Tipping_Points_report_2015
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<strong>Shift</strong> 7: Storage for All<br />
The tipping point: 90% of people having unlimited <strong>and</strong> free (advertising-supported) storage<br />
Expected date: 2018<br />
By 2025: 91% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred<br />
Storage capabilities have evolved tremendously in the past years, with an increasing number of companies offering it almost<br />
for free to their users as part of the service benefits. Users are producing increasing amounts of content, without worrying<br />
about ever having to delete it to make room for more. A clear trend of commoditizing storage capacity exists. One reason<br />
for it is that the storage price (Figure 4) has dropped exponentially (by a factor of approximately 10, every 5 years).<br />
Figure 4: Hard Drive Cost per Gigabyte (1980-2009)<br />
Source: “a history of storage costs”, mkomo.com, 8 September 2009 15<br />
An estimated 90% of the world’s data has been created in the past two years, <strong>and</strong> the amount of information created by<br />
businesses is doubling every 1.2 years. 16 Storage has already become a commodity, with companies like Amazon Web<br />
Services <strong>and</strong> Dropbox leading this trend.<br />
The world is heading towards a full commoditization of storage, through free <strong>and</strong> unlimited access for users. The best-case<br />
scenario of revenue for companies could potentially be advertising or telemetry.<br />
Positive impacts<br />
––<br />
Legal systems<br />
––<br />
History scholarship/academia<br />
––<br />
Efficiency in business operations<br />
––<br />
Extension of personal memory limitations<br />
Negative impact<br />
––<br />
Privacy surveillance<br />
Unknown, or cuts both ways<br />
––<br />
Eternal memory (nothing deleted)<br />
––<br />
Increased content creation, sharing <strong>and</strong> consumption<br />
The shift in action<br />
With over 40% of the world connected to the internet today, virtually unlimited storage is at the tip of everyone’s<br />
connected fingers, whether by computer or smartphone. Over 1.4 billion people are users on Facebook, <strong>and</strong> hundreds of<br />
millions are using WeChat, Google <strong>and</strong> Yahoo applications; YouTube; <strong>and</strong> thous<strong>and</strong>s of other rapidly growing <strong>and</strong> evolving<br />
consumer platforms for creating, storing <strong>and</strong> sharing personal information for free. These services provide free storage<br />
based on ad revenues <strong>and</strong>/or “freemium” (free at entry level) pricing. With the ultra-low cost of data storage <strong>and</strong> the rapid<br />
rise of new services globally, anyone with access can have almost unlimited storage today.<br />
<strong>Deep</strong> <strong>Shift</strong> - <strong>Technology</strong> <strong>Tipping</strong> <strong>Points</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Societal</strong> <strong>Impact</strong><br />
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